Munawwar Rana returns Sahitya Akademi Award on “scripted” TV Show

Urdu Poet Munawwar Rana, who hails from Rae Bareli in Uttar Pradesh, was brought by ABP News TV channel to return his Sahitya Akademi Award on a scripted live show. Rana carried the Award and a cheque of Rs 1 lakh and waited for his turn before handing those over to ABP News.

The ‘Award Return Ceremony’ was held in a meticulously planned manner on a live show on ABP News, called ‘Sahityakar vs Sarkar’. Many anti-Modi Writers, neutral Writers, BJP leader Sambit Partra, RSS Ideologue Rakesh Sharma, CPI leader Atul Anjan and others participated in the debate.

As planned earlier, Munawwar, who was called all the way from Rae Bareli, opened his bag and returned the award at a wrong place. He asked ABP News to do whatever they wanted with the award and cheque.

Rana showed no respect for the award when he said he had thrown it somewhere in the house and made a lot of efforts to locate that. Whatever, he got maximum mileage from the “drama” scripted and played out on live TV.

RSS Ideologue and Prof. Rakesh Sharma teared into the Writers and Left liberals with a lot of solid points. They had no answers to Rakesh Sharma’s questions. BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra called Munawwar Rana’s act as deliberate and planned.

Prof. Ganesh Devy, who recently returned the award, stood exposed when Sharma asked him to answer whether his NGO received less foreign funds during Modi regime or not. Devy’s NGO ‘Bhasha’ received Rs 12 crore in the last 8 years till 2014, but after Modi Government launched a crackdown on NGOs and their foreign funding, Devy suffered a cash crunch situation. Bhasha received only a few lakh after Modi returned to power. Devy refused to answer to the questions and backed off from the debate.